This study seeks to identify the intergenerational determinants and effects of child abuse in a sample of urban multiproblem families, using longitudinal data collected over more than twenty years. That is, do persons abused as children grow up to be abusing parents? Our subjects, who were children when our data collection began, now are of childbearing age, some with children of their own. The childbearing attitudes and practices of these subjects will be studied with reference to their own childhood experience. Particular emphasis will be given to the identification of "turning points" or "escape routes" that some subjects have taken to break away from patterns of abusive parenthood to which they were exposed as children.